President Thabo Mbeki sneeringly called the media "fishers of corrupt men". Yes, Mr President, and have you noticed how great the catch has been lately? It's like a sardine run.

Don't politicians ever learn? There are so many clear examples to learn from: US president Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal; National Party cabinet minister Connie Mulder and the Info Scandal; PW Botha and his death squads, Vlakplaas and the CCB; ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni and his 4X4; British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his exaggerated claims on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The lesson? The truth will always surface, no matter how you cover up or try to spin your way out of it. Sometimes it will take a while, sometimes it will be quick, but it is a universal law of nature that the truth cannot be concealed forever.

There is a lesson we as citizens and taxpayers should also learn.

Remember consecutive apartheid ministers of police denying before God that activists were being tortured? Remember defence minister Magnus Malan stating in parliament and before the Truth Commission that the military had nothing to do with the assassinations of David Webster and Anton Lubowski? Remember Tony Yengeni swearing with his hand on his heart and in full-page advertisements in Sunday papers that he was as clean as the driven snow? In all these cases, the courts have decided otherwise.

The lesson? Never, ever trust a politician. The louder politicians and other public high flyers profess their innocence, the more you should prepare yourself that every single allegation against them is true, and then some.

Increase your levels of suspicion when the accused start blaming the system or the judiciary - or say that the Scorpions unit is like the apartheid security police.

When the accused does eventually turn out to be innocent, be pleasantly surprised. Because it doesn't happen often. It hasn't happened yet in the more than two decades that I have been a political reporter.

If the government had instituted a proper investigation into the arms deal when the first allegations of corruption were made, we would all have said: hey, look what an honest government we have.

But their first instinct was to deny, to cover up and to blame the media. Opposition MP Patricia de Lille was even accused of recklessness and disloyalty to the country for warning about a snake in the grass right at the beginning of the arms deal.

If the government had not blocked the unit of Judge Willem Heath from the investigation, as even the auditor-general now says it shouldn't have, this whole messy Shaik-'n-Zuma saga would not have happened. And the ordinary citizen's trust in government would not have been shaken so fundamentally.

If I remember correctly, it was the same Justice Minister Pennuel Maduna who now has to defend the Scorpions, who kicked out and insulted Heath.

I can see why Deputy President Jacob Zuma was so livid that his personal finances were being made public. I would also be if I spent R37 000 more than my income every month.

Zuma's monthly overexpenditure - that is over and above his not insubstantial monthly salary - is double what ordinary MPs take home every month. I would also feel sensitive if it were disclosed that I had overdrafts of a quarter of a million rand at three banks and I was a politician and not an entrepreneur.

I also have an entry in my annual budget under "Casanova MdP" like the deputy president. But mine was not R64 000, it was R64, for flowers for the woman in my life on Valentines Day.

But then, I'm a bit of a cheapskate, and the one thing you cannot accuse our politicians of is that they are cheap.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. Our politicians feel they should compete with their really wealthy former comrades like Tito Mboweni, Saki Macozoma, Nthato Motlana, Zwelakhe Sisulu and others. You simply can't do that on a politician's salary. Unless ...

One way of competing with the top fat cats, of course, is to be a town manager or executive mayor and to then be kicked out for being useless. They all seem to walk away with millions.

And to think less than 10 years ago the white captains of industry in South Africa were concerned that the ANC would implement their economic policy of the time, socialism.

The bad news, I believe, is that our minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang seems to be one of the clean politicians in parliament. Wouldn't it have been fortunate if we could catch the incompetent politicians with their hand in the till rather than the ones who had actually done a good job?

By the way, if the Democratic Alliance thought the recent revelations are great for their own cause, they are in for a surprise.

We remember how viciously they opposed the appointment of Bulelani Nqcuka as head of the Prosecuting Authority because he was an ANC member. En kyk hoe lyk hy nou.

With acknowledgements to Max du Preez and The Star.